Leadership Profiles: Emma Eliasson

Leadership

How would you describe yourself as a leader?

“Stability, respect, and warmth are the words that I use to describe my leadership.”

Emma Eliasson took on the role of department manager back in 2018, a new challenge for someone who had not previously been a manager – “It had been quite a turbulent time in that team and during the time that I took over, there had been many management changes in a short time. I remember processing this and concluding that the best sort of service that I probably could provide to this team was stability.”

Four years later Emma is Regional Manager, having received positive feedback and creating a strong foundation leading to better business results. “I would say that that my leadership is characterized by stability and respect and my strategy is to bring teams together, and to create opportunities for collaboration rather than competition.”

How does Etteplan support leadership and growth?

Emma agrees that Etteplan has supported her leadership and growth and she continues to aim to pay it forward by supporting others in a continuously developing environment.

With the growth of the company comes opportunities, and Emma believes that one aspect of this means taking on more responsibility. “I've been on quite a journey within Etteplan, starting as a consultant, and team leader, department manager and finally stepping into the role that I am currently in as regional manager."

On the other hand, Emma emphasized that when we talk about growth, it is important that it is not only advancement to leadership positions. “I mean that we are a technology company, and we should really highly embrace that growth can be many things - it is personal, learning something new, or development of the depth in our expertise.”

Culture

How would you describe the culture at Etteplan?

“To me Etteplan has been an employer where I can be myself.” Emma’s personal experience is that organization has allowed her to thrive in an environment where her strengths are valued and utilized.  She also sees this in others, continuously impressed with the high level of competence within the company and how this is reflected in the culture.  

“Where I am based Västerås in Sweden, I feel really that I'm surrounded by a warm and open organization, and I hope that our coworkers around the company feel the same.”

In what ways do you feel you have an impact on the company culture?

“I have a responsibility in my everyday work life to think about how I act as a leader, it reflects how people both inside and outside the organization sees Etteplan.”

The culture that Emma has experienced that she believes in, means The ability to be herself goes hand in hand with representing Etteplan.

Values

Our values are: Customer oriented, attractive, and proactive. What do they mean to you?

In her own words,

“My favorite amongst the expressions in our corporate vocabulary is actually none of those three, its ‘Success with people’ It is listed as one of the key elements of our strategy.

We are grounded in the insight that the people that we can attract and satisfy with interesting tasks, and good leadership, are the ones we will be able to maintain and develop our business together with. If we don’t respect that, the talented people will go somewhere else.”

How do you see this in practice?

Success with people should be seen in our everyday practice, according to Emma. It is about interactions with our own people, and interaction with our customers.

“The way we work with our customers affects the assignments that we are able to offer our employees – interesting projects and further build our competences. When we build up our people, we can become so much more.”

Wildcard: If you could offer one piece of advice about anything, what would it be?

After giving it some thought, Emma’s advice is “surround yourself with people that give you energy,” a true classic.